If Leonardo Da Vinci had been only one thing -- a painter, an architect, an engineer, an inventor -- he would have been the greatest painter, architect, engineer, or inventor in history. But the truth is, if he had been only one thing, he wouldn’t have been Da Vinci.
What made Leonardo Da Vinci great was that quality of synthesis, of seeing the relations of all things, nothing separate from anything else. He was able to take knowledge and insight from all his fields of interest, and make them work together. And he was interested in everything. He saw all things as connected, and knew that all things used together to make a new, unprecedented whole. It was this quality that made him what we remember today: not an artist, or a builder, or a visionary, but all of them together. And paradoxically, it is this quality that sets him apart from us, and makes him hard to understand.
What kind of elevated being must he have been, to be so great at so many things?
As it turns out, he was a man of fairly humble beginnings, or at least, partially so. He was the love child of a Florentine notary, Ser Piero, and a peasant girl named Caterina. Leonardo was born in 1452 in the Northern Italian village of Anchiano, near Vinci. Thus, his famous name is actually more of a simple designation, and a slightly inaccurate one at that: “Leonardo, of Vinci”. He might more accurately have been called “Leonardo, from somewhere near Vinci.” His full name at birth was “Leonardo di ser Piero da Vinci”.
He was admitted to the Florentine painters’ guild in 1469. He began a friendship with the Medici family, and developed another great patron, Ludovico Sforza, with whom he would serve until the latter lost Milan to the invading French army in 1498. Later on, he would accompany Cesare Borgia in service as a fortifications engineer. He would go on to work for French Kings and Italian Popes, as a sculptor, a, engineer, and a painter. He died in France in 1519.
Within that sixty-seven year life span, he created a body of work that would take some people a lifetime merely to recount. His interest in all fields of study, and his desire to understand everything, to experiment with everything, and to improve everything, left a list of accomplishments that is as great in breadth as it is in depth.
The great span of Leonardo’s works might best be understood by the difficulty one has in describing him. Even today, it is sometimes difficult for us to pigeonhole someone with diverse interests. How do you explain to someone that Leonardo was a military engineer, but a sculptor too? He was the one who invented the idea of the helicopter, yes, but also designed a bridge? That he made designs for such things as a bicycle, a multi-barrelled cannon, a diving apparatus and a life belt? That he designed the mechanics of a rack-andpinion steering system, and a gearshift transmission comparable to that used in
modern automobiles?
One of the areas in which Leonardo was interested was time. Where the Greek philosopher Aristotle was concerned with the philosophical implications of time, Leonardo examined it from the point of view of an engineer, asking not why it is, but rather, how does it work? Specifically, Leonardo was interested in the mechanics of timepieces.
And, of course, there are his paintings. Leonardo Da Vinci is famous five hundred years after his death for his many accomplishments, but his paintings are among the most famous works of art in human history. His most famous painting is also the most famous painting in the world. The “Mona Lisa”, hanging in the Louvre in Paris, is a mere 21 inches by 30 inches. But no painting in the world is more recognizable. People who have never been to Paris, who know nothing of Art or History, are still familiar with the “Mona Lisa” and the mystery that surrounds her enigmatic smile and unknown subject.
He is also famous for “The Last Supper” . The religious painting depicts the shock as Jesus reveals to his disciples that one of them will betray him to his enemies. If the “Mona Lisa” could comfortably fit under a person’s arm (and has; it was stolen in 1911 by a Louvre employee who simply hid it under his coat), “The Last Supper” cannot be moved, as it is painted on the wall at Santa Maria delle Grazie in Milan. Even if it were not, the sheer size of it would preclude easy
transport. It is nearly 15 feet by 30 feet.
Leonardo Da Vinci was not a prolific painter (most art historians credit him with 15 paintings done either entirely or in large part by his hand), but he was an extremely prolific draftsman. The volume of his drawings and notes is such that when he died, he left behind 6,000 manuscript pages. Although his paintings are his most famous legacy, they are so few in number partially because he was always experimenting with new chemical and material combinations, not always successfully. “The Last Supper” was one such experimentation, and it was described as starting to deteriorate within sixty years of completion.
By contrast, his drawings have endured in more complete preservation. A surprise to many viewers who consider him primarily a painter, Leonardo’s sketches capture the immediacy and flow of his thought translated onto paper. His sharp strokes and line work reveal the suddenness with which his inspiration appeared, creating something from thin air, and combining the typical to form the extraordinary. A masterpiece, conjured in a minute and lasting forever. Not unlike Leonardo himself.